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Barry Sidesteps Constitution

The U.S. Constitution empowers and limits the government to protect and defend rights. The particular rights, powers, and limits depend on whether a person is a citizen or just a person.

According to Article One, only Citizens can be elected to Congress. But the 6th Amendment dictates that all persons—not just citizens—are owed a speedy trial with an impartial jury.

The 14th Amendment “provides a broad definition of citizenship, overruling the decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which had excluded slaves, and their descendants, from possessing Constitutional rights.” The 14th also required all people—not just citizens—to be given equal protection of (and from) the law.

That’s why the previous President held suspected terrorists at Gitmo. Once a human is on U.S. territory, he is granted due process under the Constitution. Gitmo is not U.S. territory, so the suspects can be held indefinitely with minimal rights.

In order to fulfill his promise to close Gitmo, the current President faces a dilemma. Moving the detainees to U.S. territory would grant them inconvenient rights.

After hearing passionate arguments from the Obama Administration, the Supreme Court acquiesced to the president's fervent request and, in a one-line ruling, let stand a lower court decision that declared torture an ordinary, expected consequence of military detention, while introducing a shocking new precedent for all future courts to follow: anyone who is arbitrarily declared a "suspected enemy combatant" by the president or his designated minions is no longer a "person." They will simply cease to exist as a legal entity. They will have no inherent rights, no human rights, no legal standing whatsoever -- save whatever modicum of process the government arbitrarily deigns to grant them from time to time, with its ever-shifting tribunals and show trials.
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And now, once again, 144 years after the Civil War, we have established as the law of the land and the policy of the United States government that whole classes of people can be declared "non-persons" and have their liberty stripped away -- and their torturers and tormentors protected and coddled by authority -- at a moment's notice, with no charges, no defense, no redress, on nothing more than the suspicion that they might be an "enemy combatant," according to the arbitrary definition of the state.

Once this President, or any future President, declares you a “suspected enemy combatant”—perhaps due to your rantings on the interwebs—you immediately lose your right to a speedy trial or to confront witnesses against you.

You can’t even appeal your demotion from personhood. The Constitution no longer applies to you. Because Barry said so.